Haus D'Amour (Envy & Love Planning Room)

[Jinarrow]

Keep this thread work-related. We have another thread for roleplaying and relaxing up soon in the Guild chatterbox.

Now that you know the huge amount of work needed to be done for the Ball, and thus the room, please rethink over whether you are capable of shouldering such burdens throughout the year. If you think you are incapable of remaining active enough throughout the planning, please step down. We will hold nothing against you, because do keep in mind that your inactiveness will have severe consequences to the room progress. If you decide to step down, please post here or PM me.  

[Jinarrow]

Now that's settled, lets get down to business.

Public Fundraising:
Many ideas has been thrown around by me, Dusky and Ninja for awhile but the ideas haven't been practical enough. Our room is extremely understaffed. We have no artists. We need to stop only throwing ideas around we could think of and delve into the deeper part of it - the details, the success of it, understanding our situation. ANYTHING ART RELATED IS OUT. Just because we created a fundraiser doesn't mean it's going to be successful, and what we need is for the fundraiser to successful because we need the MONEY (and a LOT of it). So to make the fundraiser successful we need good planning, because fundraising requires us to reach out and communicate to the Gaian Public.

Dusky have suggested we look from this approach:

You need to have a positive attitude. If you THINK you can't do it, you can't.
I don't have much experience with online fundraisers, but I've done some for the school and there a few things you gotta do.
1st: You need to make sure you get a good income
2nd: You need a prize that will make people want to join the fundraiser
3rd: You have to tell the people WHY you're doing the fundraiser
And the fundraiser has to be fun.

Ideas we have so far:

1) The tip jar. We could use a competition with that.
The tip jar tells us how much we've earned from it and the recent tippers. We could do something like the highest tipper get's x amount of our profits.
Not very fun though. (Idea from Dusky)

2) Tektek/Poem/Story Contest
Where they have to enter x gold in to enter the contest
It has to be VERY special, with good prizes.


Try to think in detail. Stop throwing ideas around. Think through this thoroughly. Be specific when suggesting your ideas.

For example, I suggest a story contest. This story contest will be held for a month in the Writer's Contest Forum. It will be a short story contest, ranging from x words to x words. It will be based on (how many) theme(s). What are the themes? How many catagories are there? How much are the entering fees? What are the prizes? Let me state here clearly that using part of the entering fees is not practical, as all the contests in the writer's forum are at least 100k+ for first price. How will we get the money for the price? Will we donate the money ourselves? Or should we ask for public donations? Should we collaborate with another more experienced group? Is there such a group? Any backup plans in case something goes wrong?

Fundraising also involves advertising. Who shall we reach out to? Guilds? Forums? How?

That, is how specific we need to be. Let us tackle one fundraising idea. If we can manage one successfully, then we can consider tackling another one. But that's not very possible, with the amount of time we have left.

I suggest one story-writing contest and one poem contest. I haven't thought of the themes, but will come back for later. I have found a group (The Writer's Contest Charity) that is hugely successful and is helping Gaians organise writing contests. This is the link. However, their help has a price: it is a rule that people requesting for help must be a past sponsor to one of their other contests. So if that's not possible, we can organise our own, which is not very hard. The only problem is regarding the price.

This is what I have right now. Do you agree on the writing contest? Or do you have a better idea? Think this through, then give your suggestions.  

[Jinarrow]

Roleplaying
This is a very important and crucial part if you are to involve in the Ball. You MUST know the basics of roleplaying to involve yourself in the Ball. The posts in the room threads at the time of the Ball move extremely fast. Last year, in Hades room alone, around 15 (one page worth of) posts are typed in the range of 3 seconds. There will be hundreds of people attending the Ball. Ball-goers will greet, talk and communicate to you. You will have to respond to them quickly and effectively. Remember, you are the entertainer, and thus, there will be A LOT of people trying to start a conversation with you, and that's excluding the people from your own room. You have to keep up, juggle everyone, make sure you don't miss out on anybody, keep in character and keep the plot rolling all at the same time. You have to be entertaining, humorous and charismatic (if not nobody would bother to enter your room). It is not easy.

So to prepare all of you for this, a roleplaying thread shall be put up soon. Admittedly, nothing can prepare you for the actual speed you'll face at the Ball, but we must do the best we can. The most important thing is to remain calm, think quickly and choose the right words, which can only be obtained by experience.

Remember, our room is understaffed. It is almost certain that everyone in this room has to learn to roleplay to a certain degree.

The one and most important thing: The thread needs to keep going. I need everybody (and I mean everybody) to involve themselves in it at least once a day. That means log in, check out the thread and post once a day. It also serves to monitor your active-ness in the guild. However, if you are really, really, REALLY unable to keep that pace at a certain time (say, for one week), then inform me and everyone else via PM or in the thread.

And don't tell me it's too much to ask. The most important exam of my life (that will determine my future) is next week and yet here I am, typing all this out since 4 hours ago. Why? Because I'm a host, and this is my 'job'. I am obliged to do this. I cannot afford to spend so much time in Gaia: yet I am. Because if I don't, then I can't expect anybody else to take this seriously as well. So let me say this again:

I AM SERIOUS.

AND SO SHOULD YOU.

That is all. =) We will keep you informed once the thread is set up. If you have any problems about this, please post them here.  

[Jinarrow]

Game
To keep us active, there's a game I created (or borrowed) in the chatterbox. It's really fun! XD So you should really check it out!!

Game: 3 Word Story

Have fun!! XD  

[Sublette]

*Sub takes a few notes on his note-pad* If i may consider, we can do a competition of the best dressed, the winier gets 100k, and the person that comes in second could get 50k, the price to enter would be 10k, or 5k.  

[Sublette]

W00t! I just made 200k by selling old stuff, who do i send it to?  

[sailor sunburst]

i could sacrifice a few of my old MC's as prizes or to sell. the ones i'm willing to give up are prism armor, solar sash, and light spirit. what say you?  

[Swervey]

I'd also like to add that we really do need to get serious. Some of you have never taken part in planning a room before, but it's a lot more work than it seems like.
Sub: Send it to Chloris Floral. Post when you send the trade so we can get on and accept it immedietly. Also, that's an idea we could do we just need to know how we get that money (and if we'll make a profit), and more specifics of it. Like, how long would it last? What kind of theme would the avatars be? Could it be tekteks, or only your avatar? That's the kind of specific we need to get in to.

Sailor: That sounds great smile If you want to, you can send a trade to Chloris Floral which is the room mule. We'll be keeping all our funding and important things there instead of one person's account.

Okay, so for a contest idea: Me and shu were talking about the tip jar, but I'm not sure if we can tell how much each person donated. Maybe it would be better to have them send trades to the mule and the person who sends the most money in at once gets a prize. Again, though, not very fun. Maybe we could turn it into some kind of charity auction where people would bid more than usual because it's for a good cause...maybe not though.
Oh, and if you guys want to set up a contest/fundraiser, talk to Shu first and clear it with the hosts. I doubt you would go make a random contest, but if it's for this room it has to be 'okay'ed. Just saying =)

Shu, I like the writing contest. I'll go check out some other competitions so we can figure out what a good entrance fee, time limit, etc is.  

[Swervey]

Urgh, so the only thing I don't like about the writing contest is that there are no contests with an entry fee. They all look like people with too much money on their hands...
I feel like if we want to do a writing contest no one will want to try because we need the entry fee and it'll be the only one that costs someone money to enter. I'll try to think of something we can make a profit of... *thinking cap*  

[Jinarrow]

I posted the name for our Room Mule in the first page. In case you forget who to send the Gold to, just check it out there. smile

Sub: Way to go, buddy!! =D Great job! *hugs* High five! XD And Dusky is right. Please be specific in your suggestion. Dusky and I are quite busy with our own lives so we don't really have the time to scurry through the forums to check whether tektek contests are more approachable to avi contests, the current 'in' themes for these best dressed competitions and so and so forth. I'm afraid you'll have to do some research yourself. :/

Sailor: Great to hear your willingness to participate, dear friend. smile But just in case, I would suggest running through the MCs before donating them to the mule. In the past balls, MCs are used quite often for the avatar outfits. However if you're really not sure, then just send it all to the mule and we'll check it out for ya, Kay? ;D

Dusky: I know. =.= I wish they could donate the money to the Ball instead of throwing it away like that. Then we wouldn't need to run around worrying about money every year. But the WCC DO have contests that require an entrance fee, but Alas, the sponsorship problem. :/

Also, in regards to the charity idea, it doesn't sound so bad. I remember Blissy running an auction last year selling her old (but some rather valuable) stuff, and it was quite successful, In it's own way. If we mention this is fundraising for the Ball, or fore charity, most Gaians are willing to help out. In that aspect, the writing competition with an entrance fee might work, but we won't know for sure until we try. And to compensate for it we'll need a unique theme... Which will need some time and brainstorming to think about. Same goes for the best dressed idea fin Sublette. It IS possible to hold auctions as well, but then we'll have to see how much items we can gather and how much of them we can bother selling instead of having to use it for the Ball in the long run.

Tip jar, however, has quite a big chance at succeeding, in that sense. I recalled one of our old mate, Poyudi's Blueforest fundraiser (which is something like the tip jar) earning LOADS from that last year. Impressive LOADS. I wonder if we can still find it though, and whether it's still running, since he kinda disappeared last year.

One last thing to add in regards to Dusky's addition: Try to take it in easy. If we do this step by step and cooperate well with each other the planning will definitely work out smoothly. Communication, in that sense, is extremely vital. Our room planning last year got so hectic in the last minute (like, 72 hours no sleep kinda hectic) because of communication failure. So your assertiveness to work together and inform us of anything is extremely important, keep that in mind. smile We really appreciate it.  

[Chloris Floral]

This is your Room Mule speaking. Send me money and I'll be happy! =)  

[Swervey]

The Blue Forest

This is the fundraiser Poyudi did last year, I think it's a great idea. If we did something like it, I could make the badges (or whatever we decide on) with photoshop. There weren't a TON of people, but they did earn a lot of money. I think it'd be a great fundraiser to do.

And as for the MCs and stuff, I say hold on to them or let the mule hold on to them. We may use them for the avatars and if we don't we can use it as a prize in a contest either in the ball or in a later contest.  

[Jinarrow]

Yes. And it's not too difficult to do, either. =D But from this comes another (not so big) problem. In reference to the Blue Forest example, we might be raking in a hell lotta money for this, so that might create tension between our room with the others. You see, Blue Forest is a fundraiser for the overall ball. If we rake in that much money like last year for our room only, everyone else will definitely ask an amount to be donated to the Ball mule. In the end, that still leads us... Kinda dry in a way. And think: would other people be willing to donate a lot of money for a SINGLE room for the Ball? We don't really know how much Gold we will need, even!

We have two options from this approach: Either 'tone down' the money for the badges (so we won't be raking too much to cause a problem) or do this as a fundraiser for the Ball as a whole, but we get a larger percentage of the Gold earned in comparison with other rooms in the end. Provided if we can negotiate this with Angel. And we might be getting a bigger support of bumps from everyone else from the Ball.

What do you think? Any suggestions?  

[Swervey]

I dunno. Doing it as a ball will make a ton more bumps, but at the same time everyone is going to be doing their own thing since we're already split up into rooms. I think we should tone it down and just bump it a lot. Maybe we could have a random prize or two for people who hang out and post to make people want to stay in the thread (which means more people will see it). That does make us lose some money, though, but it might work.

And Shu, I was looking at Ares and Enyo's descriptions from last year. I kept cracking up.

"Please help Ares to get his precious old Enyo back to her bloodlusting self! And don't go telling him how good the situation is for World Peace. He shall devour your soul and spit out your bones. And castrate you if you're male"